WALDPORT, Ore. — An object believed to be debris from a SpaceX rocket that recently reentered Earth's atmosphere in a fiery blaze washed up on the Oregon Coast on Friday, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said.
Around 3:15 p.m., the sheriff's office was notified of a charred object that washed up in Alsea Bay near Waldport. A fisherman removed the object from the body of water, and it was briefly stored near a local business, deputies said.
Authorities responded to check it out, and Central Oregon Coast Fire and Rescue determined the object did not contain hazardous materials that would pose an immediate threat.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and SpaceX were both contacted.
"SpaceX was not able to determine if the object was a component of one of their spacecrafts," the sheriff's office said in a news release, "however it did appear consistent with a composite overwrapped pressure vessel."
The sheriff's office said SpaceX engineers used notes from deputies and numerous photos of the object to determine that it could be transported safely.
Deputies said it was moved to a "secure location" so that more could be learned about its origin.
On March 25, people across the Pacific Northwest watched in astonishment as a series of burning objects streaked across the night sky. Astronomers said it was caused by a Falcon 9 rocket, launched by SpaceX three weeks earlier, reentering the atmosphere. Jonathan McDowell at the Center for Astrophysics said the rocket had "failed to make a deorbit burn."
On April 2, a sheriff's office in central Washington said a composite-overwrapped pressure vessel from the same rocket was found on someone's property.
